Merestone

Sabrina Amrani is pleased to present Merestone, Jong Oh’s third solo show at the gallery.
 

The title of the exhibition refers to the stones that serve as a reference point or that demarcate a land boundary. In this exhibition, Oh proposes a single sculptural installation titled 'Room Drawing (merestone) #1', which is nothing more than a balance between the features of the gallery and the work itself.

Jong Oh's artistic practice is particular in that he does not use a studio, but rather he creates minimal sculptures in situ that respond to a given spatial situation. Space is his inspiration - the material that the artist uses - being absolutely involved in his artistic creation process. The artist listens carefully to what the space suggests with an open and flexible mental predisposition since the process is very intuitive. Any element of the space can resonate and speak to the artist: a nuance of architecture, a ray of light, a shadow, even marks and cracks in the wall can be elements to which the artist responds. It could be said that the artist's work is a record of the conversation that he himself has with space.

Oh creates his works by responding to the nuanced configuration of each venue in which he exhibits, constructing spatial structures by suspending and interconnecting a limited selection of materials: ropes, chains, fishing wire, marbles, wooden and metal rods, and painted cotton threads. The elements of his works appear to float or stand on their own, and depending on the viewer's spatial relationship with them, they appear either connected and intersecting or completely independent: suggesting additional dimensions to a simple three-dimensional space. Oh also uses lighting to create his compositions where real shadows or lines drawn by the artist in graphite extend their ethereal structures and favor the effect of optical illusion in a dialogue of lines and planes.

Oh appeals to the viewer to question their own perception and the way they relate to the space that surrounds them, offering a space for meditation and contemplation before the hustle and bustle of contemporary everyday life: a subtle and refined visual haiku about universality and the sound of space. His practice challenges the traditional assumption in sculpture of dense masses and heavy objects, acting as simple yet complex drawings that point out the particularities of the space they inhabit.